Free Rich Client Portlet Integration
Integration snippet and demo on ULC Code Community site show how rich UltraLightClient applications can be deployed as portlets.Basel, Switzerland, June 13, 2005 – Canoo provides a free Portlet Integration to deploy UltraLightClient applications on a portal server. This brand-new code contribution offers a solution to run Rich Internet Applications (RIA) as portlets on any portal server.
Portlets as defined by the Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 are an emerging standard to develop web portals. This new standard poses a challenge for rich client technologies. A portal server reloads the entire browser page whenever a server roundtrip occurs. This means that portlets must be able to save and refresh the state of their user interface (UI), which is virtually impossible for rich clients that maintain their state on the client side. Since UltraLightClient has a server-side representation of the UI state, it fits much better into the portal server architecture. Leveraging the new pause and resume functions included in UltraLightClient 6.0, the new Portlet Integration now allows deploying any application as a portlet.
The Portlet Integration is available for free at the UltraLightClient Community site. It runs with any portal server that complies with JSR 168.
Benefits of Rich Client Portlets
UltraLightClient-based rich client portlets have significant advantages:- platform sharing: share the development infrastructure, as well as the production platform between HTML and rich client applications.
- faster development: save about 50% of development time & costs compared with HTML portlets by working with the complete set of the powerful Swing widgets and a homogenous Java-based programming model rather than a heterogeneous mixture of technology including JSP, Servlets, HTML, Struts, Java, etc.
- better performance and responsiveness: UltraLightClient portlets are faster and more responsive because they generate about 10 times less network traffic than HTML portlets.
- superior usability: the full power of Swing enables Java programmers to develop state-of-the-art user interfaces that do not suffer from HTML's limitations.
- multi-channel applications: write a rich client UI for an HTML application or vice versa by just rewriting the presentation layer. HTML UIs and rich client UIs can communicate by sharing the same session context.
Java Rich Internet Applications
UltraLightClient is a lean library that delegates tasks to the standard J2EE/J2SE infrastructure whenever possible. It uses Swing on the client, standard communication protocols set by the J2EE container, and standard lifecycle management on the server. In contrast to other more proprietary platforms, UltraLightClient is an add-on library for Swing and J2EE and can be easily integrated into existing web platforms. The principal design of UltraLightClient is based on the half-object + protocol design pattern. Applied to Swing, this pattern is used to offer the Swing API in a server-side programming model, providing rich user interfaces in a web architecture. UltraLightClient-based applications can be deployed in any J2EE container, as a portlet, or even stand-alone without changing the code. On the client, a standard JRE from 1.3.1 upwards is all that is required. See Key Differentiators to find out how the Canoo solution compares with other technologies.
Developers familiar with Swing are productive with UltraLightClient within a very short time. The Java library closely follows the Swing API. In many cases, code migration from Swing to UltraLightClient simply entails replacing the corresponding class and method names. With UltraLightClient, Swing developers have a homogeneous environment for developing web applications with complex GUIs. There is no need to juggle between JSP, JavaScript, and HTML to achieve interactive client/server applications.
Code Community for UltraLightClient Developers
The UltraLightClient Code Community (http://ulc-community.canoo.com/) provides a platform for developers to share useful extensions, add-ons and integration snippets. All code contributions are available free.
Canoo at JavaOne 2005
Canoo is exhibiting at the 2005 JavaOne Conference in San Francisco from June 27 to 30 at booth # 337. Please feel free to stop by at the booth to see the latest developments on UltraLightClient.